Night Photography

It’s fair to say that I DO love a spot of night photography… All I wish is that night time wasn’t so darn late at night, when it’s all dark and stuff !!.. If nights weren’t so late, and mornings weren’t so early, I’d be a happy bunny mefinks..

This is Appley Tower on the Isle of Wight. The tower itself wasn’t lit unfortunately, so the shot itself had to be a 2 minute exposure to make best use of a few scattered street lights along the promenade behind me. Way off on the horizon you can also see another landmark from a previous vacation, which is the Spinnaker Tower with the ever so slightly impressive but disconcerting view..

Well here are my entries for the Rainbow Challenge… Fortunately due to a fairly pleasant summer most of the shots are all entirely new and “kinda” summery… but I had to throw a couple of old favourites in there too..

Red – and I have to confess to struggling to find any decent red shots, so you’ll have to make do with a nice little red Ferrari Dino 246 from our summer hols… Not mine unfortunately, but it was in Beaulieu Motor Museum that we visited during our summer hols, so it counts… Oh, and one of those red things from the garden too (not my garden though)…

Firstly, a quick apology for being utterly blog absent for the past almost couple of weeks, but I’ve been suffering from broadband speeds reminiscent of syrup rolling uphill… and my patience in waiting 6 weeks for every single page to load very quickly wore almost as thin as my hair…

I’d like to say it gave me plenty of time to edit images, but unfortunately not, as I have developed the usual disinterest in shots that are more than a week old… lol… I’m sure I have plenty old shots to air, and maybe I’ll get round to them sooner or later… Speaking of which, here’s one that has been gathering dust for a while now… I’m hoping to get a few more star shots soon, as I’ve a nice little trip planned to a real picturesque area… weather and darkness permitting… ;)

As for the broadband issues… Well fingers crossed they’re resolved now, but I’m only crossing fingers, as holding my breath may result in some discolouration… It has been pretty frustrating though, as the so called “tech experts” available at the end of the phone were very quickly established to be JUST a call centre in some far away land, who’s only qualification seemed to be the ability to read the exact same list of questions from the screen in front of them… “Have you re-started your router / Have you re-started your computer / Have you unplugged your phone / Have you had this exact same conversation 10 times before / Have you realised I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about / Have you got ANY patience left at all”….. You get the idea…. The WORST thing though, was that THEIR online speedtester told me that THEY had restricted the IP profile speed on my line, hence my speed problems… and despite informing them of this particular key result, they were unable to assist, as this wasn’t on their list of “Have you turned it off and on again” questions !!!… Every time I spoke to them, the only solution seemed to be “I’ve re-set everything, and it’ll all be fine in the morning”…. Ummmm…. NO !!!… lol… Finally they sent an engineer out, and his FIRST response to my rant was “Well yes indeed… They’ve restricted the IP profile speed on your line… That’s why your broadband is cr*p !!, why didn’t they just remove the restriction !?!?”….

As happy as I was with my previous “creative offering”, I wasn’t “quite” so happy to have it sitting in such a prominent place on my blog, as it didn’t seem to really fit with the general scheme of things, so I’m hitting you with another quick post, and I’ve moved it out of position slightly… Call me fickle… lol… I’m thinking it will be the beginning of a little series of fruity posts though (or at least food based), if I can dream up a few more ideas… ;)

So here’s a night shot taken whilst on holiday a while back… Oh to live in a cottage like this, even if it was directly opposite the churchyard that scared the wotsits out of my daughter… ;)

I also need to say a huge thank you to Natalie at Phusion Photography too, or The Fuse as per her Blog, for her glowing appraisal of one of my early flickr HDR images, and how it inspired her to try it out… although I have to admit it’s an image I’d not be entirely impressed with these days…. but we live and learn and improve hopefully… Check out her sites, as they are amazing, and if I’m in any small way responsible for the images she produces now, then I’ll happily take the credit… lol…

Well I did previously allude to having done a few scary things whilst on holiday, and here’s another… although it wasn’t scary for me, more so for my daughter… lol… which is ALWAYS amusing… ;)

Churchyards in the dead of night are great places, I think… It’s no wonder people are dying to get in there.. *groan* !!… Sorry… lol… I do love them though, and have spent many an entirely comfortable hour in them with the camera… (and sometimes without.. lol)… more worried about being arrested than anything else… One of my goals whilst away though was to follow in Mrs A’s footsteps, and get me some star trails… so off to the nearest churchyard I headed (what better place is there to not be disturbed)…

The previous night I’d also tried my hand at some star shots at the beach (those to come later), and my daughter wanted to accompany me, given her new found interest in photography (and the opportunity to stay up extra late !!). Well I agreed, as it’s always good to have a buddy at night… plus I find you appear much less suspicious when with your daughter, should anyone call the police about the crazy person creeping around in the dark… lol…

Well this night I asked her if she also wanted to come to the churchyard with me… and you could literally HEAR the turmoil going on in her head… ANOTHER extra late night, and some more photography, and time doing fun stuff with dad… against the thought of going in to a churchyard, in the dark… late at night !!!… LOL… Her first response did make me laugh though, as she responded with “But won’t there be real living ghosts in there ??”… Real Living Ghosts !!!… Hahaha… How about that for a contradiction in terms… Well after some reassurance about ghosts, she agreed… We arrived at the church, and I opened the gate, and she exclaimed “Are we actually GOING IN !!”…. Ummmmm… YES !!… lol… So we entered the churchyard, and had a walk around to find the best spots, and as we rounded the corner of the church (with her leading), we disturbed a tree full of starlings… and they weren’t best pleased judging by the noise they made.. LOL.. You should have seen her jump, and the accompanying squeal was hilarious.. Yeah I know, I’m mean.. ;)

Anyways… Enough words… Here’s the important stuff… The resulting pictures…

These were both shot fully manual at ISO 100; f5.6; 10mm and each a single 15 minute exposure…

I also did a little bit of light painting with the torch in this one, to illuminate some of the foreground and church a bit..

Another amusing incident was with a black churchyard cat… a particularly noisy churchyard cat.. lol… Whilst we were round the darker backside of the church, we heard some rustling in the bushes… Well I knew it would be an animal of some description, but my daughter wasn’t quite so convinced… and then the glowing eyes appeared, accompanied by the loudest and strangest meowing… lol… It was a constant almost monotone me’eeew me’eeew me’eeew me’eeew… Scared the cr*p out of my daughter until I shone the torch on this little black kitty bounding through the long grass… ;)

Oh… and lastly… and entirely unrelated to this post… Here’s a link to a page of posts for Karma’s Scavenger Hunt for April…

Funky Slug Photo’s on Flickr

For an alternative to the photography I have posted here, please also check out my Flickr website, where I go under the pseudonym of Funky Slug. Here you can preview a much larger selection of my work.